Serbia Election Results: Student List Wins as Vučić Concedes

Serbia election results ended Aleksandar Vučić’s 12-year hold on power: the student-led Student List won Sunday’s snap parliamentary election on Oct. 25, 2026, and Vučić conceded the same night in Belgrade. “It is clear we have lost these elections,” the right-wing populist leader told supporters at his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) headquarters.

With about 96% of polling stations counted, Serbia’s Republic Electoral Commission (RIK) said the Student List had about 2.24 million votes, or 52.65%, against 1.67 million, or 39.2%, for Vučić’s list, the BBC reported Monday. A projection by pollsters Ipsos and CeSID, based on 98.4% of their sample and reported by public broadcaster RTS, gave the students 141 of the 250 seats in parliament and Vučić’s “United Serbia” list 103. A majority needs 126.

Serbia election results: how big the Student List win was

Vučić himself said the students would hold 135 to 140 seats and his party about 105. RTS reported that no other major list crossed the 3% threshold; Ivica Dačić’s list took about 2.2%. Four ethnic minority parties enter parliament under a lower natural threshold, with the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians and the Albanian Coalition winning two seats each in the Ipsos-CeSID projection.

Turnout set a record. CeSID and Ipsos put it at 67.6% by 7 p.m., the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992, The Guardian reported, and RIK’s later partial count showed about 68.8%. Voters waited up to two hours in some places, and diaspora Serbians lined up at polling stations from Ljubljana and Munich to Paris, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Our pre-election preview of Vučić against the Student List described a race in which polls varied widely. The final margin was far wider than most of them showed.

From the Novi Sad canopy collapse to the ballot box

The movement began in November 2024, when a concrete canopy collapsed at the Novi Sad railway station and killed 16 people. Students blamed corruption and shoddy construction and launched protests that grew into a national anti-government campaign over two years. Vučić, who could not seek a third presidential term, resigned the presidency last month and called snap elections in a bid to return as prime minister, a post he left in 2017.

The Student List has no single obvious leader. It fielded 250 candidates from across society, including doctors, actors, academics, farmers and former basketball star Dejan Bodiroga, now president of the Euroleague. Its manifesto promised to remove officials who broke rules in cracking down on protesters, end the practice of party loyalists running public companies, and free the public broadcaster from political control. Vučić and the SNS have repeatedly denied corruption.

Independent monitors flagged problems on election day. Raša Nedeljkov of the monitoring group CRTA said “a large number of irregularities” were recorded, including photographed ballots, attempted vote-buying and so-called carousel voting, The Guardian reported.

Russia, the EU and Serbia’s new direction

Vučić backed Serbia’s bid to join the European Union while refusing to sanction Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, and he was endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the Associated Press. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov praised Vučić’s role in relations with Moscow and said he hoped “the new political force” would see cooperation with Russia as in Serbia’s interest, adding, “it takes two to tango.”

Brussels welcomed the result. EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos said “a new chapter can begin for Serbia. The door to the EU is open.” Hungary’s Prime Minister Péter Magyar, whose party ended Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule in April, also hailed the outcome. The vote comes in a busy stretch of European elections, after Bulgaria’s presidential contest.

What happens next in Belgrade

Attention now turns to who the Student List will put forward as prime minister. Lead candidate Ilija Srdanović told BBC Serbian, “This will be a free state.” Parliament speaker Ana Brnabić is serving as caretaker president, and a presidential election is due in December.

Political scientist Nebojša Vladisavljević of the University of Belgrade told BBC Serbian the result was “an avalanche that has wiped out an authoritarian regime and entire political scene.” The students will now have to turn a protest movement into a governing coalition, with Vučić’s party still holding the second-largest bloc in parliament.

Sources

• BBC News: Serbia’s veteran ruler Vučić concedes election to student-led protest movement
• RTS: Ipsos and CeSID projection and RIK partial results
• The Guardian: Serbian leader Aleksandar Vučić ousted by student movement
• AP News: Vučić concedes defeat to Serbia’s student-led movement
• Euronews: Student List wins Serbian election as Vučić concedes